Trader Joe’s Sublime Ice Cream Sandwiches make me a little sad. I’m convinced they’ve gotten smaller. I can’t prove it and I don’t need to. I buy them less often now, because I already know how it will feel when I open the box.
The number on the box is one price tag. What’s inside is the second one, and that’s the one I’m reacting to.
AI subscriptions have a second price tag too: the usage that comes with the seat. In September, two AI coding tools made theirs smaller.
On September 1, GitHub ended three months of promotional credits on Copilot. Business seats went from $30 of included credits a month back to $19, Enterprise from $70 back to $39. Seat prices didn’t change. On September 14, Anthropic ended a temporary 50% boost to Claude Code’s weekly limits. The new standard is 25% above the old one, and Anthropic said plainly that “compared to today, this works out to a 17% reduction.”
Both still landed like a smaller sandwich. It stings to lose something you’ve grown used to, even when you knew it wouldn’t last.
I don’t read either change as a trick, though. Shrinkflation works because nobody tells you. Both vendors announced the change weeks ahead, and both explained the math. No one knows yet what the right allowance is for tech changing this fast, not the vendors and not their customers. So allowances will keep moving. The only real choice is how.
If you sell AI, borrow from the cereal aisle. A box that says “30% more, free” has told you the extra is a gift before you open it. Label the bonus as a bonus from day one, say when it ends, and show the arithmetic when it does.
Then watch what happens. Do customers feel robbed, or do they upgrade to keep what they got used to? My guess is it depends on whether they knew it was a bonus.
If you buy AI, budget to the base allowance, not the promotion.
And have two ice cream sandwiches for dessert.
